Defending the Gospel

Could you please take your Bibles and turn to Galatians chapter 1.

If you recall, we are still not done with the Gospel of John,

However, as we were coming to the time of the Jesus’s suffering, death, and resurrection, I would like to leave the Gospel of John for a time and come back to it closer to the time of Easter.

As I was praying about where God wanted us to go next, I felt Him point me toward the book of Galatians.

The reasons for that, I believe will become apparent as we open this book and prayerfully ask God to teach us.

Galatians 1:1-6 “1 Paul, an apostle—not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead— 2 and all the brothers who are with me, To the churches of Galatia: 3 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, 4 who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, 5 to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen. 6 I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—”

I would like to stop right there

Because right away we should sense that something is wrong here.

If we are at all familiar with Paul’s letters, and I hope we are, something should catch our attention here.

in all of Paul’s other letters, almost without fail, after he introduces himself, he launches into how thankful he is for his readers, or he launches into words of praise to God

Romans, 1&2 Corinthians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1&2 Thessalonians, 1&2 Timothy, Titus

All of these letters have words of thanksgiving and praise in the first chapter.

Galatians is the only one of Paul’s letters which doesn’t.

And this should catch our attention right away.

Because obviously something is wrong.

And it is. And Paul is up front with what is on his mind.

Paul has received some news about these believers, and he is alarmed.

He wastes no time in sitting down and composing this letter to them.

Here’s his issue:

“I am ASTONISHED that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel.”

We know from reading Paul’s letters that he is passionate about the Gospel of Jesus Christ

Romans 1:16 “16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.”

Paul never backed down from defending the Gospel, and he’s not about to back down here

“I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel

So what is going on here?

First of all, we need to know a little bit about who this letter is written to

Unlike some of Paul’s other letters, Galatians is not written to a certain person, or to a single church, or to a group of churches in a city.

Rather, it is written to the Believers of an entire region of the Roman empire.

It wasn’t an official province, but it was located in the larger area known as Asia Minor

There were Jews living in this area, but most of the people in this area were Gentiles or Greeks.

And as such, most of the Believers that Paul is writing to are Gentiles.

This is important to understand to help put the rest of this letter in context. They are Gentile believers.

They did not grow up Jewish. They did not ever meet Jesus as He walked on this earth.

They had probably never even heard of Jesus before Paul and Barnabas came to them with the Gospel message on their first missionary journey

The story for that is found in Acts 13,

There we see how when Paul and Barnabas came to this region to preach the gospel, the Jewish religious leaders at first welcomed them into their synagogues, but then rejected their message.

And Paul said, “OK, if you are going to reject the message of the Gospel, we are going to turn to the Gentiles”.

When the Gentiles heard this, the Bible said that they began to rejoice and glorify the word of the Lord, and as many as were appointed to eternal life believed. (Acts 13:48)

And from there, the Gospel message spread throughout the entire region.

The Gentiles received and welcomed the Gospel with glad and open hearts

These are the Believers to whom Paul is now writing

Bible scholars believe the book of Galatians to be possibly the earliest NT book to be written. They place it around 49 A.D.

The reason I bring this up is two-fold

This might be the first letter ever written by an apostle to the early church

If you were to play with timelines and dates in the story of the early church, I think that you would find that Paul and Barnabas were barely back from their first missionary journey. in which they had brought the gospel to the Galatians

Possibly, he was still on this journey

Why is this significant? Because this is a group of very baby Believers. The church was brand new.

And scarcely has Paul returned from bringing the Gospel to them, then were falling prey to false teaching.

It seems like along with the Gospel being preached, right behind Paul and Barnabas, there were coming false teachers and perverting the purity of the Gospel with false teachings

If it was possible for the Gospel message to be distorted only 1 or 2 short years after it was preached,

Do you think it’s possible that the American church could be facing false teaching almost 2000 years later? I think it’s possible.

Who were these false teachers?

We believe that these false teachers were known as The Judaizers

The Judaizers were Jewish or Gentile believers (emphasize that they were believers)

But they said that in order to be the best Believer, the best Christian, you had to observe Jewish ceremonial practices.

They believed that Jesus came first and foremost for the Jews.

Now, they didn’t deny that Gentiles could receive Jesus, but they said that in order for a Gentile to receive Jesus, and be a Believer, that Gentile had to also become like a Jew in observing the ceremonial law.

What did that mean for the early church?

In those days, Jews and Gentiles didn’t mix in every day life. And With the teaching of Judaizers, this attitude carried into the early church

We will see how Paul had a confrontation with Peter over this

There was also the issue of circumcision.

The Judaizers said to the Gentiles, you have to be circumcised in order to be a Christian

And there was probably more to it than that

And the reason that these Judaizers spread this kind of teaching was to avoid being persecuted by the Jews

Galatians 6:12 “12 It is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh who would force you to be circumcised, and only in order that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ.”

It was so that they could look at the Jewish religious leaders and say, “Hey, look what we are doing. You don’t need to get upset. We are still Jews. Just sort of different Jews, but still Jews nonetheless”.

It was an issue of fear for them!

A way to save their own skins!

And doubtless, these Judaizers were very persuasive in their arguments and in their teachings.

And they probably came across as very authoritative. Some of them might have even had the privilege of seeing Jesus in the flesh and hearing Him teach.

And besides, who wouldn’t want to avoid getting persecuted by the Jewish authorities?

And the Gentile believers, these Baby Christians, were easily swayed into thinking that these Judaizers were teaching them correctly, and they began to follow them.

And Paul is devastated! He is angry! His heart feels like it’s being ripped to shreds.

His spiritual children, his spiritual babies are being led astray

And he sends them this letter, begging them, entreating them, to not be led astray. To return to the purity of the Gospel that they were taught at first.

Paul’s heart is this: Galatians , you must get the Gospel right.

Paul’s heart for us would be, “Fairview, you must get the Gospel right!”

What happens when you don’t get the Gospel right?

God is not glorified

This bears to be repeated over and over again.

The Gospel, that Christ died for our sins, was raised on the third day that we might have life, that we might be reconciled with our Father, all of this is for the Glory of God

The Gospel is proclaimed so that you and I and people all over the world would become worshipers of God, living in communion with Him.

As John Piper says, “Missions (Proclaiming the Gospel) is not the ultimate goal of the Church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn’t. Worship is ultimate, not missions, because God is ultimate, not man. When this age is over, and the countless millions of the redeemed fall on their faces before the throne of God, missions will be no more. It is a temporary necessity. But worship abides forever.”

We proclaim the Gospel and spread the Gospel, not so that we can “do missions”.

We proclaim the Gospel so that God is worshipped

And so that He receives the Glory

There are a lot of preachers out there who claim to be preaching the Gospel.

Yet I’m convinced that there are preachers out there who aren’t getting the Gospel right. The reason is because God isn’t getting the glory

The preachers are.

Their ministries are

When we don’t get the Gospel right, God doesn’t get the glory. Instead, the messenger gets glory that should only be given to God

Sinners are not saved

We may think “Well, that’s obvious”.

But again, there are messages out there being preached that are not true salvation messages

There are sinners who need the true Gospel but who are being presented with a message of works, or who find themselves entrapped in cults where a message is preached which sounds like it might be the Gospel, but it isn’t

Where leaders use their powers of speech and their charisma to lead people astray, and into thinking that they are saved, when what they are believing really is not the Gospel

It is crucial that we get the Gospel right, because it is the mission of Jesus followers to make disciples of all nations

Believers don’t live in freedom

When we don’t get the Gospel right, Believers like you and I don’t live in freedom.

Instead, we live in bondage

This is something that we may not think about as much

See, the Gospel doesn’t end with us praying the sinner’s prayer

The Gospel of Jesus Christ, is (or should be) lived out daily in the life of a believer

We should be living the Gospel each day, every moment of our lives

And the Gospel (listen to this very carefully) The Gospel is a message, not of

Bondage

Not of Law

The Gospel is a message of

liberty,

of freedom

Did you know that? did you know that the Gospel proclaims liberty and freedom?

We are going to be seeing this in the book of Galatians

Has this been your experience? Have you experienced the freedom and liberty that the Gospel proclaims?

This is something that we are going to be talking about more as we look at this book

This is the reason that Paul is so heartbroken when he hears what is happening to the Galatian believers!

Is because they are forsaking a message of freedom and liberty and taking up “the yoke of bondage” as Paul calls it at one point

Paul can’t believe what he is hearing about them.

Paul uses a military term to describe what they are doing. He says in verse 6 “You are deserting God! You are deserting Him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different Gospel

Desertion is a pretty strong term. In the military, desertion is one the worst things that could be done by a soldier. In our past history, desertion was serious enough be be punished by death

The last soldier to be put to death for desertion was in WW2, but today it is still a serious offense

This is how Paul describes what the Galatian believers are doing. You are deserting God!

And you are turning to a different gospel.

Galatians 1:7 “7 not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.”

There is NO other Gospel, but there are some who preach a distorted Gospel.

and then Paul gets even stronger in his language.

Galatians 1:8-9 “8 But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. 9 As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.”

If ANYONE preaches a different gospel, me, angels, whoever, let that preacher be accursed!

Lexham Theological Wordbook ἀνάθεμα

ἀνάθεμα (anathema)

This is probably the strongest word that Paul could have used to say what he thought

It means literally to call down divine judgement upon someone, to put someone under the wrath of God.

Literally it means in today’s terms “If anyone preaches a different message and calls it the Gospel, that person should just go to hell”.

Folks, these are pretty strong terms

Not something that you normally hear in church

Especially not when you live in a world where everyone is “allowed” to have their own truth and everyone is just supposed to respect your truth because it’s MY truth after all. You go get your own truth

I don’t think Paul would have agreed with that.

Paul says in verse 10, Galatians 1:10 “10 For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.”

when it comes to the gospel, I don’t care waht people think of me!

and we shouldn’t either.

When it comes to the purity of the Gospel message, it is crucial that we get it right!

there is no other gospel

I know that this has been a mouthfull this morning

But this morning here are the questions for us:

1. What gospel message have you believed?

Do you believe a gospel message that proclaims freedom? Or is it a fake gospel message that proclaims bondage

2. Are you, are we, as passionate as Paul was about making sure taht the purity and simplicity of the Gospel message is upheld and defended?